Blood Reckoning: DI Jack Brady 4

by Danielle Ramsay

  Embarrassed at her next admission, Molly Johansson looked down at her hands. ‘So, I had a good look through his phone. I couldn’t find anything. No texts. He must have deleted everything she sent to him and vice versa. So I decided to have a look though his online history. He’d recently closed down a browser for a page on the Royal Hotel, showing the availability for that Saturday night. That’s when I realised that she must have texted him about arrangements and asked him to sort out a hotel. Or at least said that she had chosen a hotel. I was devastated. I didn’t know what to do.’ Molly paused.

  Brady waited for her to get her thoughts together and continue.

  ‘After his shower, I challenged him. I demanded to know who had texted him. Told him I wasn’t a fool, that I knew he was seeing someone. That was when he lost it. Said that he didn’t like me prying on him, asking him who was texting whenever his phone went off. He accused me of being fucked in the head. That all he was doing was putting in late hours for Robert Smythe. For us. That he was working hard to get his career established so that we could get married. That whenever a text or email came in, it would be connected with the political campaign he was working on. But I knew it wasn’t. You know? Intuition? You know when someone’s cheating on you. It’s a feeling you can’t shake off. Anyway, he stormed out and that was the last I saw or heard from him . . .’ she faltered, realising the magnitude of what she had just said.

  ‘I tried ringing and texting, but he ignored me,’ Molly shrugged, her eyes now focused on the tissue paper she was absentmindedly twisting between her long fingers. ‘So . . . I got mad. Had a few too many drinks, as you do. And I guess it clouded my judgement. You see? He just kept ignoring my calls and texts. So I decided to confront them. Him. At the hotel. Make a scene. Shame her. Get her to leave him alone. Threaten her face to face that I would tell her husband. That would have scared her off. She had too much to lose if he found out.’

  Brady shot a glance at Conrad. He face may have been impassive, but Brady knew that he was transfixed by every word.

  She suddenly looked at Brady, fearful. ‘I didn’t do it,’ she stuttered as tears fell down her face. ‘I . . . I just wanted them to end it. I . . . I loved Alex. I really did.’

  Brady nodded. ‘I understand that,’ he replied. It was time now to start directing the interview. He had questions that needed answering. He exhaled slowly. Looked at her and then spoke. ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she shrugged. ‘Apart from make a fool of myself.’

  Brady waited for her to fill in the gap.

  Eventually she continued. ‘I . . . I got a taxi from Heaton to the coast. To the hotel. I went up to reception and asked if my boyfriend had checked in. There was a male and female receptionist. The guy was abrupt and shut me down. Said it wasn’t company policy to reveal who had checked in. So I decided to wait it out. I went into the bar. Had a couple more drinks and watched until he left. Then I asked the woman, who had been really friendly, if she could help. I showed her a photo of Alex. She didn’t say anything but I knew that she recognised him. Just the look on her face. She looked so sorry for me. That’s how I knew she had checked him in. So I took a chance and explained what I thought he was up to and asked if she could ring his room. Let him know that I was in reception. That I needed to talk to him. She was really nice. She said it was breaking the rules and she’d get into trouble if anyone found out, but she did it for me. Said she’d been there before herself. But he didn’t answer the phone. She let it ring, but nothing.’ Molly paused for a moment, as if remembering what had happened.

  Brady watched her. She looked exhausted. No surprise. But he still needed a lot more from her before she could be released.

  She suddenly focused on Brady, as if reading his thoughts. She gave a weak half-smile. ‘I noticed his room number. When the receptionist dialled it. Room 212. So I went back to the bar and had another drink and waited until the lobby was too busy for her to notice me going into the lift. It was really crowded that night. Some stag party, they said.’

  Brady nodded.

  ‘I did go up to the room. Banged on the door. Shouted for them to come out. But they didn’t. He didn’t.’

  ‘What time was this?’ Brady asked. He wasn’t surprised that no one had reported a disturbance on the second floor. It would easily have gone unnoticed amidst the noise and drunken revelry of seventy or more lads on a stag weekend.

  She shrugged. ‘I’d had a lot to drink. But I’d say sometime after ten-thirty.’

  ‘The last text you sent at ten forty-five, was that before or after you went up to his room?’ Brady asked. It wasn’t worth reading the text to her. She knew which one he was referring to.

  Uncomfortable with the reference to the text, she dropped her gaze. ‘Before I went up to his room but I . . . I wish I hadn’t . . . You know? I . . .’ her voice faltered as she wondered about the consequences of that text. Weighed up what would have happened that night if she had not attempted to confront them.

  She looked back up at Brady, chewing her bottom lip. ‘I know who did it. I know who killed him.’

  ‘Go on,’ Brady said.

  ‘Sarah Huntingdon-Smythe. The wife of the Conservative MP Robert Smythe.’

  Brady didn’t visibly react. But it didn’t mean he wasn’t shocked. He had seen the politician on the news and at various functions. He was a very good-looking man in his late fifties, who could have passed for ten years younger. He had a look about him that reminded Brady of a younger Rutger Hauer. Brady was also aware that Chief Superintendent O’Donnell was on personal terms with him.

  ‘You do realise what you are claiming?’ Brady questioned as he leaned in towards her.

  He needed Molly to be aware of the seriousness of her allegation.

  ‘Of course I am.’

  Brady didn’t say anything.

  ‘She heard me banging outside the hotel room door. I was screaming that I knew she was in there. That if she didn’t end the affair I was going straight to the press.’

  Brady nodded at her, despite the fact that he didn’t accept a word of it. The problem was, Molly Johansson was clueless about crucial details involving the murder. The key one being that De Bernier was killed in a way identical to the Joker killings of the Seventies. That in itself ruled out the hypothesis that it was some love tryst gone awry. That Sarah Huntingdon-Smythe had panicked when her young lover’s girlfriend had threatened to expose them and that she had then killed him. This murder was planned and executed to precision. The killer had a motive for murdering De Bernier.

  Could Sarah Huntingdon-Smythe have been sexually involved with Alex, though? Perhaps. At this stage of the investigation, Brady conceded that anything was possible.

  ‘Tell me why you believed that your boyfriend was having an affair with this woman?’ Brady asked, curious to hear her reasoning.

  Molly Johansson took a moment before answering Brady. She then nodded, as if decided on the answer. ‘Alex and I were both politics students,’ she began.

  Brady nodded.

  ‘Last summer we got the opportunity to work with Robert Smythe. An internship of sorts. We didn’t get paid for it. But it wasn’t about that. It was about gaining invaluable experience. Alex was determined that he would get a permanent position out of it as a political aide to Robert. They got on very well, you see. I imagine if . . .’ she stopped, unable to finish the sentence. She looked at Brady, eyes filled with regret. ‘What I’m trying to say is that when he finished his Masters I would have been very surprised if there wasn’t a job waiting for him with Robert. You see . . . Alex was really good. Charismatic, clever, politically motivated. He had it all. He had the makings of a great politician.’

  Brady looked at her. ‘Is that what he wanted to be?’

  ‘Yes. That was his end goal. And he would have done it. He would have made it to the House of Commons if . . .’

  ‘So where does Sarah Huntingdon-Smythe come into this?’

  Johansson sig
hed. ‘I knew there was something going on. Not at the start,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘It was only at the end of last year that I really started to notice that Alex was always busy or preoccupied with work. Or at least, that’s what he said. Always making furtive phone calls or texts. He’d promise to see me and then break it off at the last minute. And lately, whenever we were invited to social gatherings with the Smythes, I would find Alex talking to her. He would always be so attentive and charming. Even Robert noticed it. I caught him looking at the two of them once and he looked furious. So it wasn’t just me who had noticed the intimacy between them. I asked Alex, and he denied it, claiming I was being paranoid. That she was a thirty-five-year-old married woman. Married to his employer, no less. But I didn’t buy it. I knew there was something going on between them. Then lately, they started having these really heated discussions. Raised voices and everything. Other people noticed. Including her husband. But the last one was a huge argument.’

  Brady leaned forward. Now he was interested.

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘Last Thursday evening. There was a political function that we attended. Then we went back to the Smythes’ house with other party members for drinks. That’s when I saw them together. In one of the guest bedrooms. Alex had said he was going to the bathroom. But I knew that he was lying. That he was looking for her,’ she said, her voice starting to crack. Molly shook her head as her eyes welled up. ‘There had been this unspoken tension between them at the function earlier. She kept staring at him. Trying to get his attention. But Alex made a point of ignoring her.’

  ‘You said they had an argument?’

  ‘Yes. I heard her shouting at him that she wanted it to end. For him to leave her life for good. That she never wanted to see him again. She wanted him to quit Robert’s political campaign. If not, she threatened that she would see to it that Alex was discredited within the Conservative Party. That he would never work in politics again if he did not end it.’

  ‘If what you’re saying is correct, then why would she contact Alex after she ended their affair that night?’

  Johansson looked surprised by Brady’s question.

  ‘I don’t know . . .’ A pained look crossed her face. ‘Maybe he didn’t want it to end?’

  Brady sighed wearily. He leaned back as he weighed up the significance of what Molly Johansson had just said.

  ‘Did anyone else see or overhear this?’ he asked.

  She shook her head. ‘No.’

  ‘Are you certain?’ Brady pushed.

  ‘Yes . . . I had followed Alex. I wanted to know what was taking him so long. You know, I had my suspicions about them. She wasn’t anywhere to be found downstairs so I knew that they must be together. So I went looking for them. That was when I heard raised voices coming from one of the guest bedrooms on the first floor. The door was closed but I could still hear them. She was furious with him. I knew Alex was in there with her. I recognised his voice. It was too low to be able to hear what he was saying. But she was shrieking at him. She really seemed to have lost it.’

  ‘Why do you think she was shouting at him?’

  ‘I assume he wasn’t accepting what she was saying . . .’ Molly shook her head as tears started to fill her eyes. ‘Maybe Alex threatened to tell Robert? Maybe that’s why she was screaming at him? Alex could be . . .’ She faltered for a moment. ‘He could be very determined and single-minded when he wanted to be. Alex never let anything get in his way. Never.’

  Brady now understood why Johansson believed that Sarah Huntingdon-Smythe could have murdered her boyfriend. She had just given Brady a motive. If Alexander De Bernier had threatened to expose his relationship with Sarah to her husband, then that would be a good enough reason for her to want rid of him – for good. But the problem he had with Molly’s account was that there were no credible witnesses. He just had her word. Which, at this precise moment, didn’t count for a lot.

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I went downstairs and waited for him.’

  ‘Did you say anything to him?’

  She shook her head. ‘No, I didn’t get a chance. It wasn’t the place to talk. On the drive home he said he had a really bad headache and that he was going back to his place. I asked if I could come back with him and he said no. That he wasn’t in the mood. That he would drop me home and see me the following evening as planned.’

  ‘Molly?’

  She looked at him, unsure of what he was going to ask.

  ‘Was there anything about Alex that struck you as odd lately? And I mean anything?’

  ‘Aside from acting suspicious all the time, and never being around?’

  Brady nodded. He waited while she thought about it. But he knew from the expression on her face that there was something.

  ‘It may sound stupid but he got this new plate BMW 4 series convertible. Metallic silver. It even had a private licence plate,’ she said, frowning. ‘I asked him how he could afford it and he just shrugged it off. Said it was one of the perks of working for Robert’s campaign. He needed to drive all over the place for political events and the car was a necessity. Allegedly it came out of the campaign budget.’

  ‘You don’t believe that?’ Brady asked. It was clear from the look in her eye that it was a crazy suggestion.

  ‘Christ no! All they talk about is the budget. That it won’t cover this or that, and that we need to increase donations. So I knew that he was lying to me. Alex had the documentation for the car. He owned it outright. If it had been a company car, he wouldn’t have had the registration details.’

  ‘How did you know he had them if you lived at two separate houses?’

  ‘I found them when I was rummaging through the glove box. I imagine he thought they were safer in the car, as it was alarmed, than leaving them in his bedroom. He didn’t really trust his housemates. He was always complaining that people would go into his room and take stuff without asking. He even put a padlock on his door, but he was still paranoid that they could get in.’

  Brady wondered exactly what it was that De Bernier was hiding in his bedroom that would lead him to put a padlock on the outside. He was now even more intrigued about the victim. Two hundred grand in a savings bank account and now some flash BMW sports convertible that would have cost serious money.

  ‘Do you think the car was a gift?’ Brady asked.

  ‘What do you think? Yeah! He got the car three months ago. That was around the time that it was clear he was seeing someone else. And that was when I started to notice the way he behaved around Sarah. We’d go to some political event together and he would always leave me to go and chat to her. I used to have to stand there and pretend that I didn’t notice them, laughing and flirting together.’

  Brady resisted the urge to ask Molly why she would stay in a relationship where she was certain that her boyfriend was cheating on her. Let alone allow herself to be humiliated by the man she loved. He knew from his own experience that life was not simply black and white. People were human. That made them, by nature, fallible and susceptible to the grey areas in life.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Monday: 4:38 p.m.

  Molly Johansson was now detained in a holding cell without charge. Not that Brady thought she had anything to do with the victim’s murder. When questioned, she had no idea about the Joker murders from the Seventies. Not that it surprised Brady, given that she wasn’t from Newcastle and hadn’t even been born when the crimes had taken place. Johansson had only been in the UK for a year, having spent the last twenty in South Africa. Could she have found out somehow about the killings?

  Perhaps. It was highly unlikely. But she did have a motive.

  Right now, the victim’s girlfriend was the least of Brady’s concerns. He was still troubled by the fact that De Bernier’s murder was identical to the Joker killings, and wanted to talk to the SIO in charge of the original Joker case – the retired DI McKaley. He would have roughly been Brady’s age at the time of the original
investigation. Thirty-seven years on and he was some dribbling, obstinate, foul-mouthed old man living in a care home off Preston Park, on the outskirts of North Shields. Long hours, bad diets, coupled with heavy drinking and smoking had taken its toll on the original investigative team. The last one standing was ironically enough DI McKaley; known on the force for the long hours he worked, but equally the long hours he would spend drinking in the station bar after his shift ended. Or even during it. Something unheard of nowadays.

  McKaley had no surviving family members and had effectively disappeared – hidden away in a nursing home. Brady had been forewarned by the staff of the specialist care home that he was suffering from senile dementia. Brady had no clue what the effects would be on the once highly regarded and feared detective inspector. Not that Brady had any regard for the copper. Not after Conrad had disclosed McKaley’s style of policing.

  Conrad had insisted on coming. Whether it was to have some closure for Martyn Jenkins, Brady couldn’t say. But Conrad was in no mood for arguments. He wanted to see McKaley in person.

  McKaley was still an indomitable figure of a man, even at the age of eighty. He was just under six foot tall and two hundred pounds in weight. Brady imagined if he did kick off with the nurses that he would be difficult to control. But despite McKaley’s physically healthy appearance, it was his mind that had radically deteriorated.

  ‘Who the fuck are you?’ McKaley fired at them again as globules of spit dribbled down his white, bristly chin. His narrowed, suspicious, watery blue eyes darted from Brady to Conrad.

  ‘DI Brady, Mr McKaley,’ Brady repeated for the tenth time.

  ‘Never heard of a DI Brady,’ McKaley spat. ‘Where’s Jones and Trevors?’

  Brady could see that he was clearly agitated. They had been there for ten minutes and were no further forward. He also wished that Conrad had not insisted on coming. McKaley kept staring at him, eyes filled with disgust.